By Alan Krawitz

The yellow tenement at 9 Minetta Street, with a dubious history of suspected illegal hotel use, located within the proposed South Village Historic District, is on track for conversion from a 20-unit building to a 5,000 square foot, one-family mansion, according to information from the city’s Department of Buildings.

The likely conversion of the 1883-built structure from tenement to mansion has preservationists and housing activists alike concerned.

Details of the project, first spotted by a local preservation group, include the addition of an enclosed parking space and an increase in the building’s height by 12 feet from 60 to 72 feet.

Andrew Berman, executive director of Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, expressed a number of concerns about the development but said that the larger context was the “growing wave of development pressure in the South Village.”

He said that the city has not moved forward with a number of proposed landmark protections which were promised, including landmark status for the entire South Village.

“They designated a very small portion of the area but we’ve been pushing to get the whole area landmarked for more than a decade,” he said.  “There’s been no movement.”

He added, “My fear is that by the time the city gets around to moving, the South Village area will no longer be landmark eligible because the very fabric of the area could be destroyed.”

Berman’s other specific concerns for 9 Minetta included the additional height. “We don’t know what that addition will look like. It could pose an intrusion on the area’s historic character or be an eyesore,” Berman said.

The group’s website notes that 11 Minetta Street is the former home of the Fat Black Pussycat Theater where Bob Dylan wrote “Blowing in the Wind,” and that nearby 7 Minetta is the home of the whistle-blowing cop played by Al Pacino in the movie Serpico.

Moreover, Berman noted that the building’s other prior problems included suspected illegal hotel use as evidenced by several recent online ads advertising the building as “Minetta Suites” and hostel space as recently as 2011.

In addition, DOB records showed complaints of illegal hotel use by local residents in the past few years coupled with a building classification as a walk-up apartment and no updated certificate of occupancy to indicate use as a hotel.

“The building has a somewhat troubling history and we’re concerned for what the future holds as well,” said Berman.

It was also unclear whether the building’s somewhat new owner would continue the property’s illegal hotel use. The building was purchased by a new owner last year for about $4.5 million, per DOB records. The building’s “gut conversion” was estimated to be around $1.3 million.

The project’s consultant, Lloyd Noel, referred questions to the building’s owner, Elisabeth M. Kovac. Kovac did not respond to an email request for information on plans for the conversion.

Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance, called the mansion conversion “an insidiously selfish scheme…to dispossess dozens of people in order for one person to live in a mansion.”

Brandon Kielbasa, a housing specialist with Cooper Square Committee, a LES organization that works to preserve affordable housing, compared the Minetta Street project to another, even more highly publicized building-to-mansion conversion over on E. 3rd Street which converted multiple dwellings into an 11,600 foot one family mansion.

“We really need to fight for a change in the state legislation so cases like this and 47 E. 3rd Street will no longer be possible,” Kielbasa said. “That particular case removed essential affordable housing from a community that is in desperate need of it.”

Greenwich Village. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

by Adel Manoukian

A historic house at 186 Spring Street may be torn down by owner and Canadian developer Nordica, but not if the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) has anything to say about it.

The GVSHP has recently discovered that the 1824 house, formerly owned by Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz, has historic significance in early gay and AIDS activism. It served as a “gay commune” right after the 1969 Stonewall Riots—a series of violent demonstrations against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. Residents of the house in the early 1970s included Jim Owles, the first openly gay candidate for city public office and Dr. Bruce Voeller, the co-founder and director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This organization was the first to advocate gay and lesbian rights and was able to remove “homosexuality” off the list of mental disorders among other accomplishments.

The house is also located within GVSHP’s South Village Historic District, which the organization is trying to preserve as a whole.

The Canadian developer Nordica is planning to build a seven-story building that will have two floors of retail, three single-floor apartments and a duplex penthouse at 182 Spring Street, according to DNA Info.

Because of these recent discoveries, GVSHP has been able to get letters of support from political representatives like State Senator Tom Duane and City Councilmember Danny Dromm. The organization also urges residents and people in support of the fight to write letters to the Landmarks Preservation Committee (LPC). Due to the continued support, the City has not yet issued demolition permits for the space and GVSHP is trying to keep it that way.

Beastie Boys Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Fight for your right…to get historic sites landmarked? Developer Stephan Boivin has filed for demolition permits for an “1824 federal style house” recently purchased from Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, according to a statement from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The Beastie Boy’s former residence is at 186 Spring Street in the proposed South Village Historic District. GVSHP reports the developer previously made a public statement “promising to preserve the structure,” saying it would be kept for his personal use. The permit now requests full demolition.

According to GVSHP’s Executive Director Andrew Berman, his group has brought this to the attention of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Berman says the LPC agreed to consider this part of the district years ago, and his group urges them to do so now to save the “historic site.” The LPC has thus far refused to consider the remainder of the district a landmark site.

The house GVSHP hopes to preserve is part of a group of surviving federal style houses all built in the same year. According to the organization’s research, “though altered, the house still has the Flemish-bond brick and  two or three stories plus dormer form characteristic of federal-style (1790-1835) houses.” Horovitz sold the house in April of this year.

Not only does Boivin want the property demolished, he aims to combine it with another development site at 182 Spring Street. The GVSHP provides the facts about the South Village. In March it was designated one of the seven most important and threatened historic sites in NY State. In 2006 the GVSHP submitted a proposal for historic district designation of the South Village. Four years later a third of the proposed district was landmarked, but since the LPC has taken no action on the issue.

Since then several sites in the district have been demolished. Berman released a statement on the prospective demolition of this site: “This can either be yet another case of the city sitting on its hands while the character of one of New York’s great historic neighborhoods is destroyed, or the Landmarks Preservation Commission can finally keep its promise and fulfill its duty by protecting the remainder of the proposed South Village Historic District.”

—Alissa Fleck